that year, on the defeat of Lord Rosebery, the union of the Unionists was sealed by the inclusion of the Liberal Unionist leaders in Lord Salisbury’s ministry; and Mr Chamberlain became secretary of state for the colonies. There had been much speculation as to what his post would be, and his nomination to the colonial office, then considered one of secondary rank, excited some surprise; but Mr Chamberlain himself realized how important that department had become. He carried with him into the ministry his close Birmingham municipal associates, Mr Jesse Collings (as under secretary of the home office), and Mr J. Powell-Williams (1840–1904) as financial secretary to the war office. Mr Chamberlain’s influence in the Unionist cabinet was soon visible in the Workmen’s Compensation Act and other measures. This act, though in Sir Matthew White Ridley’s charge as home secretary, was universally and rightly associated with Mr Chamberlain; and its passage, in the face of much interested opposition from highly-placed, old-fashioned conservatives and capitalists on both sides, was principally due to his determined advocacy. Another “social” measure of less importance, which formed part of the Chamberlain programme, was the Small Houses Acquisition Act of 1899; but the problem of old age pensions was less easily solved. This subject had been handed over in 1893 to a royal commission, and further discussed by a select committee in 1899 and a departmental committee in 1900, but both of these threw cold water on the schemes laid before them—a result which, galling enough to one who had made so much play with the question in the country, offered welcome material to his opponents for electioneering recrimination, as year by year went by between 1895 and 1900 and nothing resulted from all the confident talk on the subject in which Mr Chamberlain had indulged when out of office. Eventually it was the Liberal and not the Unionist party that carried an Old Age Pensions scheme through parliament, during the 1908 session, when Mr Chamberlain was hors de combat.
From January 1896 (the date of the Jameson Raid) onwards South Africa demanded the chief attention of the colonial secretary (see South Africa, and for details Transvaal). In his negotiations with President Kruger one masterful temperament was pitted against another. Mr Chamberlain had a very difficult part to play, in a situation dominated by suspicion on both sides, and while he firmly insisted on the rights of Great Britain and of British subjects in the Transvaal, he was the continual object of Radical criticism at home. Never has a statesman’s personality been more bitterly associated by his political opponents with the developments they deplored. Attempts were even made to ascribe financial motives to Mr Chamberlain’s actions, and the political atmosphere was thick with suspicion and scandal. The report of the Commons committee (July 1897) definitely acquitted both Mr Chamberlain and the colonial office of any privity in the Jameson Raid, but Mr Chamberlain’s detractors continued to assert the contrary. Opposition hostility reached such a pitch that in 1899 there was hardly an act of the cabinet during the negotiations with President Kruger which was not attributed to the personal malignity and unscrupulousness of the colonial secretary. The elections of 1900 (when he was again returned, unopposed, for West Birmingham) turned upon the individuality of a single minister more than any since the days of Mr Gladstone’s ascendancy, and Mr Chamberlain, never conspicuous for inclination to turn his other cheek to the smiter, was not slow to return the blows with interest.
Apart from South Africa, his most important work at this time was the successful passing of the Australian Commonwealth Act (1900), in which both tact and firmness were needed to settle certain differences between the imperial government and the colonial delegates.
Mr Chamberlain’s tenure of the office of colonial secretary between 1895 and 1900 must always be regarded as a turning-point in the history of the relations between the British colonies and the mother country. His accession to office was marked by speeches breathing a new spirit of imperial consolidation, embodied either in suggestions for commercial union or in more immediately practicable proposals for improving the “imperial estate”; and at the Diamond Jubilee of 1897 the visits of the colonial premiers to London emphasized and confirmed the new policy, the fruits of which were afterwards seen in the cordial support given by the colonies in the Boer War. Even in what Mr Chamberlain called his “Radical days” he had never supported the “Manchester” view of the value of a colonial empire; and during the Gladstone ministry of 1882–1885 Mr Bright had remarked that the junior member for Birmingham was the only Jingo in the cabinet—meaning, no doubt, that he objected to the policy of laissez-faire and the timidity of what was afterwards known as “Little Englandism.” While he was still under Mr Gladstone’s influence these opinions were kept in subordination; but Mr Chamberlain was always an imperial federationist, and from 1887 onwards he constantly gave expression to his views on the desirability of drawing the different parts of the empire closer together for purposes of defence and commerce. In 1895 the time for the realization of these views had come; and Mr Chamberlain’s speeches, previously remarkable chiefly for debating power and directness of argument, were now dominated by a new note of constructive statesmanship, basing itself on the economic necessities of a world-wide empire. Not the least of the anxieties of the colonial office during this period was the situation in the West Indies, where the cane-sugar industry was being steadily undermined by the European bounties given to exports of continental beet; and though the government restricted themselves to attempts at removing the bounties by negotiation and to measures for palliating the worst effects in the West Indies, Mr Chamberlain made no secret of his repudiation of the Cobden Club view that retaliation would be contrary to the doctrines of free trade, and he did his utmost to educate public opinion at home into understanding that the responsibilities of the mother country are not merely to be construed according to the selfish interests of a nation of consumers. As regards foreign affairs, Mr Chamberlain more than once (and particularly at Leicester on 30th November 1899) indicated his leanings towards a closer understanding between the British empire, the United States and Germany,—a suggestion which did not save him from an extravagant outburst of German hostility during the Boer War. The unusually outspoken and pointed expression, however, of his disinclination to submit to Muscovite duplicity or to “pin-pricks” or “unmannerliness” from France was criticized on the score of discretion by a wider circle than that of his political adversaries.
During the progress of the Boer War from 1899 to 1902, Mr Chamberlain, as the statesman who had represented the cabinet in the negotiations which led to it, remained the object of constant attacks from his Radical opponents—the “little Englanders” and “Pro-Boers,” as he called them—and he was supported by the Imperialist and Unionist party with at least equal ardour. But as colonial secretary, except in so far as his consistent support of Lord Milner and his enthusiastic encouragement of colonial assistance were concerned, he naturally played only a subordinate part during the carrying out of the military operations. Among domestic statesmen he was felt, however, to be the backbone of the party in power. He was the hero of the one side, just as he was the bugbear of the other. On the 13th of February 1902 he was presented with an address in a gold casket by the city corporation, and entertained at luncheon at the Mansion House, an honour not unconnected with the strong feeling recently aroused by his firm reply (at Birmingham, January 11) to some remarks made by Count von Büllow, the German chancellor, in the Reichstag (January 8), reflecting the offensive allegations current in Germany against the conduct of the army in South Africa. Mr Chamberlain’s speech, in answer to what had been intended as a contemptuous rebuke, was universally applauded. His own imperialism was intensified by the way in which England’s difficulties resulted in calling forth colonial assistance and so cementing the bonds of empire. The domestic crisis, and the sharp cleavage between parties at home, had driven the bent of his mind and policy further and further away from the purely municipal and national ideals which he had followed so keenly before he became colonial minister. The
